Mrs Gwyn. I forgot—I’m deserting you.
[And swiftly without looking back she goes away. Joy left alone under the hollow tree crouches lower, and her shoulders shake.]
The Mob is rather an irritating, unsatisfactory play. It is meant to be a study in ideals, but it is astonishing how blunderingly and at the same time how coldly Galsworthy puts these ideals before us. The title is also a mistake. The attitude of the mob towards Stephen More is merely of secondary and artificial importance. He meets his death at its hands, it is true, but it plays little part in the spiritual fight he wages. The exhibition, in a final tableau, of its changing fancy—in the statue it erects to his memory—is dangerously near anti-climax, and no integral part of the whole. One cannot see that the mob is anywhere a dominant force—it is an incident, far less important here than in Strife, though there is one scene in which Galsworthy shows again, as he showed in Strife, his power of dealing with stage crowds:
[More turns and mounts the steps.]
Tall Youth. You blasted traitor.
[More faces round at the volley of jeering that follows; the chorus of booing swells, then gradually dies, as if they realised that they were spoiling their own sport.]
A Rough Girl. Don’t frighten the poor feller.
[A girl beside her utters a shrill laugh.]
More. Well, what do you want?
Voice. A speech.